ing, whence also they
have their name; and they practise the customs of the Scythians.

108. The Budinoi are a very great and numerous race, and are all very
blue-eyed and fair of skin: and in their land is built a city of wood,
the name of which is Gelonos, and each side of the wall is thirty
furlongs in length and lofty at the same time, all being of wood; and
the houses are of wood also and the temples; for there are in it temples
of Hellenic gods furnished after Hellenic fashion with sacred images and
altars and cells, 104 all of wood; and they keep festivals every
other year 105 to Dionysos and celebrate the rites of Bacchus: for the
Gelonians are originally Hellenes, and they removed 106 from the trading
stations on the coast and settled among the Budinoi; and they use partly
the Scythian language and partly the Hellenic. The Budinoi however
do not use the same language as the Gelonians, nor is their manner of
living the same:

109, for the Budinoi are natives of the soil and a nomad people, and
alone of the nations in these parts feed on fir-cones; 107 but the
Gelonians are tillers of the ground and feed on corn and have gardens,
and resemble them not at all either in appearance or in complexion of
skin. However by the Hellenes the Budinoi also are called Gelonians,
not being rightly so called. Their land is all thickly overgrown with
forests of all kinds of trees, and in the thickest forest there is a
large and deep lake, and round it marshy ground and reeds. In this
are caught otters and beavers and certainly other wild animals with
square-shaped faces. The fur of these is sewn as a fringe round their
coats of skin, and the testicles are made use of by them for curing
diseases of the womb.

110. About the Sauromatai the following tale is told:--When the Hellenes
had fought with the Amazons,--now the Amazons are called by the Scythians
Oiorpata, 108 which name means in the Hellenic tongue "slayers of men,"
for "man" they call oior, and pata means "to slay,"--then, as the
story goes, the Hellenes, having conquered them in the battle at the
Thermodon, were sailing away and conveying with them in three ships as
many Amazons as they were able to take prisoners. These in the open sea
set upon the men and cast them out of the ships; but they knew nothing
about ships, nor how to use rudders or sails or oars, and after they
had cast out the men they were driven about by wave and wind and came to
that part of the Maio